MARIANNE FAITHFULL Broken English (Island)

by Mitch Cohen

“I never lied to my lover/But if I did I would admit it/if I could get away with murder/I'd take my gun and I’d commit it.”

Lines like those, from “Guilt,” and others like “You go on and on/Like a blood stain” (“Brain Drain”) or “Do you feel the panic?/ Can you see the fear?” (“Witches’ Tune”) have, for the past few days and nights, been the trigger for unsettling dreams. Sung in a cracked, determined voice, framed by seamless, throbbingly modern music, the songs on Broken English (what a marvelous puzzle of a title) let it bleed. The album is provocative by design, courageous by necessity, brimming with reverberations.

Some of those reverberations are nostalgic, of course, calling up images of London c. 1965, girls with (in Billy Strayhorn’s lyric) “sad and sullen grey faces,” taut thighs and Yardley eyes, leading the lushest of lives. The Shrimpton sisters, Jane Asher, Sandie and Dusty, Anita and Marianne. Marianne, the girl on a motorcycle naked under leather, blonde and poignant, with a piccolo of a voice. As surely as the frilly, leggy pinups of WWII formed our fathers’ sexual ideals, these mod dollies did us in (is there even a need to mention that 1979’s keenest erotic jolt on film came from Quadrophenia's dishy bird with the utterly perfect name Lesley Ash, skirt hiked, parka askew, having it off in a Brighton alley). And Marianne Faithfull, the teenaged discovery of Andrew Loog Oldham and the lady .on dagger’s arm, seemed so fragile vyhen fragile meant — oh, the remembrance of sexism past — haveable.

What it really meant was breakable, and Faithfull broke (Cf. ’69’s “Sister Morphine”). This album, which is, in case I haven’t mentioned it yet, a work of strange and scary beauty, is no plea for tea and sympathy; when her voice fractures notes into drama-soaked nuggets of feeling, when the words get close to what we assume are the facts, we. don’t recoil. Broken English could have been a look-away nail-biter, a Judy Garland wrist-jangling display of self-congratulatory yl’m still here” exhibitionism. Instead, through an understated combination of Patti Lee Smith’s zonked trance-chant swirls, Ian Dury’s demented disco, Nico’s vocal somnambulism, and as distinctively British a sensibility as The Clash’s, Faithfull has fashioned an album of diagonal lines — war, witchcraft, domestic ruin, guilt, suicide, class and sex — that connect at the heart of a confessed “curious child” and a woman to whom promises don’t mean much anymore.

Move after move is right, even the ones that take Faithfull to the precipice. The constant percolating of a synthesizer and Marianne’s throaty singing turn Shel Silverstein’s “Ballad of Lucy Jordan,” a folk-country fable about suburban disappointment, into a piece far more affecting than you might expect; taken at a slow gallop, “Working Clas^ Hero” (why don’t more people cover late-and-post-Beatle Lennon songs?) ties Broken English to the prototype for therapeutic rock LPs and connects thematically (cultural and personal betrayal) to boot; the title track, written by Faithfull and her band, is elusive and cutting dance-rock; and guitarist Barry Reynolds’ “Guilt,” ignited by Steve Winwood’s instrumental traffic signals,. is both bloody (“though it’s flowing in my veins it’s not enough”) and witty (“I never stole a scarf from Harrod’s/But if I did they wouldn’t miss it”). Much attention has been focused on “Why D’Ya Do It,” based on a poem of sexual jealousy by Heathcote Williams, but its music is pedestrian jamming on old chords, and its explicitness — “Every time I see your dick/I see her cunt in my bed...Why’d you spit on my snatch?” —is a bit overripe, especially since it’s surrounded by lines of staggering silliness (“You tied me to the mast of the shjp of fools”).

“Though I know I done no wrong/ Meel guilt” is quite a distance from “As Tears Go By” and “Come And Stay With Me.” A voice that sounded pale and submissive with romantic ennui has become dark and aware. Some of Broken English is brilliant in the way that Neil Young is at his most fevered, and in a way that is particularly female and attuned to Faithfull’s home country in a time that Margaret Drabble has called The Ice Age. There isn’t any money to buy roses, there is joy in danger, working class resentment, and if the song “Broken English” isn’t specifically about Northern Ireland, it is emotionally. This album comes from out of the blue, is very much into the black, and is certainly one of a kind.

AEROSMITH Night In The Ruts (Columbia)

The Aerosmith boys have been down to the crossroads so many times, it must look like a figureeight to them. Head-against-thewall-bangers long before it was fashionable—I mean, these guys started out trying to play Yardbirds tunes to peace wienies at antiVietnam war rallies—they just keep on coming back through endless tour fatigue, occasionally stupifying success and the magnified everyday boredom of star status.

This time though, they’ve really got one foot in the unreserved seats. Joe Perry, the kind of lead guitarist that the electrical utilities folks have been warning us about to no avail, has finally packed up his stethoscope and walked, citing the usual lifestyle complaints and the appearance of symptoms of guitar player’s ennui-wah. Joe was as pivotal a member of the group as Keith Richards is to the Stones, but apparently, life with Aerosmith had become just another early episode of Twilight Zone, where all the male players talk exactly like Rod Serling.

It would be encouraging to say that Night In The Ruts is a throbber of a Dear Steven note from Perry, but it’s basically another false climax in a string of ultimately unsatisfying albums that began with Rocks. While it boasts more killers than your average assassination theory, it suffers from a similar lack of focus. Yes, this could be the No Gun Theory we’ve all been dreading.

Ruts kicks off with deceptive power. “No Surprise,” an incomprehensibly autobiographical Perry/ Tyler composition, is a definitively scrawled signature tune packed with dense, richochet guitars (played by Richard Supa, interestingly enough) that sound like the scratching of rat claws in Chuck Berry’s prison cell. Perry, back in the saddle for “Chiquita,” sets it up with a riff raw enough to use in a presentation of industrial safety tips for buzzsaw assemblers. This Could Happen To You: ZZZZZ BRAMMM ZUT NRRRRR SPLAT. Now you have to join the Barbarians.

Nappytime signals begin to appear on “Walking In The Sand,” a questionably faithful version of great monument to duct suck. Tyler, who would probably be more at home with the Shangri-Las than anyone cares to admit, hangs tough vocally but delivers the lyrics with the same kind of conviction as Allen Ludden attempting to pronounce “Cranberry-Orange.. .Chutney” on his radio recipe show. Great idea though—how about tackling “Popsicles And Icicles” or maybe “Soldier Boy” next time out?

Old squid-lips gets into trouble again on “Reefer Head Woman,” a natural pod-pleaser that takes the bloato blooz (sit on my big ten inch record, Greg) into the 80’s with long distance harp and piercing screams from the toddler disposal. This may be proof positive that Tyler and not Bette Midler should have gotten the lead role in The Rose, but personally, I think that if God had wanted skinny white boys to sing the blues, he never would have created swim meets.

The rest of the material on Ruts is fairly expendable, particularly their latest Yardbirds tribute (the frankly dumb “Think About It”) and “Mia,” a moody re-re-remake of “Dream On” where you can almost hear Joel Billy cautiously tapping his emery board in the background and conceding that maybe these guys aren’t so bad after all.

UP AGAINST TH€ OZON€, mATILDA mOTH€A

PINK FLOYD The Wall (Columbia)

by Joe ( ) Fernbacher

Pink Floyd is. a band seriously dedicated to playing soundtrack music for the more sinister and bizarre aspects of the human misadventure. If you doubt this, just listen to their musical score for the film More — my old college roommate did and every time he listened to it his life came qp snake eyes. Pink Floyd possess that kind of power when they’re locked into the maze of the subconcious.

The Floyd’s music is cerebral and hallucinatory; sort of like Marvin Hamlisch on an amphetamine/ quaalude lollipop ‘n’ icicle binge. Often, when they’re really strokin’ the silver-blue spinal chord of the mega-galactic beat, their music leaps ’n’ sneers through the sloppy, overgrown gardens of the criminally surreal, coming gently to rest somewhere between the brio of a sonic tampon and the vaginitus of Kubrick’s star baby. Their understanding of the ultimate giggle was nicely portrayed in their long ago soundtrack adventure for a PBS special on Salvador Dali, the grand wazoo of odd. The special was called Hello, Dali and featured a montage of Dali landscapes underscored with music from. Meddle (specifically the song “Echoes”). Under these kinds of circumstances, the Floyd wallow in the gleeful pleasure domes of the supreme. And these are the circumstances they should be allowed to constantly inhabit, these are the moments when they slip ’n’ slide through the miracle lick of unadulterated creation. And that’s the way' uh huh...you know the rest.

Lately, however, they’ve let their music get lost in the easiness of over-complexity, spiralling through that white hole created when Roger Waters screamed on “Careful With That Axe, Eugene.” They’ve foresaken that insane spark of theirs for the undying acceptance of rich teen-nods, the teen-nod being the hazy habitue of the colisseums of rock ’n’ roll whose only purpose is to stroke the grim blue underbelly of the swisy huh and take sidelong glances into the suburbanized maelstroms of chocareasms. The teen-nod when he’s on full power can glom the melt-down beauty of unconciousness like no other being on this sluggish green sphere.

With their new opus, though, they’ve managed to reattain an important edge on their noisy journey into a fractured Oz. The Wallis Krell music 'supreme, a tangled expression of the sheer nastiness of the 70’s, a four-sided operetta of the morbid swirling around in a vortex of contradiction and confusion. As a conceptual piece, it’s solid. As a musical entity, its power lies in its awesome ability to underscore the cool imprecisions of chaos confirmed. As an expression of neurotic beauty, it can hypnotize with its gruesome insistence. And as structured noise, it can turn your nerve endings into concrete roadways of carcinomatous joy and short-sheet your sensibilities. In short, this work is a perfect anti-

rhythmic parable of neurosis personified. No matter what its faults (and there are a few), The Wall is an erosive stroll into the athetoid plains of Roger Waters’ inner psychic mechanizations and the rest of the band’s overwhelming amoebaen response to said ideations. Wuzza. Wuzza.

To try and single out individual songs in a four-sided piece of conceptual music is hard. The repeated themes of breaking down the barriers that lead to deceit, unhappiness and meanness are omnipresent throughout. As a matter of fact, during the length of the entire fourth side — a Wagnerian acid overload wipeout sorta like Kafka on an adrenal hitjh — the imagery of the wall becomes so oppressive that it reminds this listener of the ending of Children of the Damned when George Sanders faces the kids with the shiny eyes and loses.

Perhaps if you stretch the point a little, two individual songs do survive the test for separate entity status. One is “Young Lust,” with as searing a guitar montage as heard from this band for quite some time; the other is “Comfortably Numb,” which is about the best way to describe the production work of Bob Ezrin on this LP. Pink Floyd deserve a producer who has a better understanding of noise than Ezrin, who is mostly a master of clutter. Pink Floyd are a band of stark contrasts, and they need a /producer who can translate this discomfort to the listener.

Dr. Joyce Brothers would have a field day with this album. I give it an 88 because it make me wanna put cats in Samsonite briefcases and strangle ’em with ties... Any way. Pink Floyd’s The Wall is great background music for taking your moped and ramming it into the side of a building.

Well maybe they is and maybe they ain’t, but one thing for sure is they’ll never be able to find a replacement part for Joe Perry with that Guitarist’s ear for the bullseye riff and overpowering sense of slash dynamics. They could use some help in the album title dept, too— this Night In The Ruts/Right In The Nuts stuff is lamer than a bent weiner knife. Haw haw and also yuk, maybe they could call the next one A Bic In The Cut (get it? get it?) or possibly even Say It Ain't So, Joe.

Rick Johnson

SAM PRICE & THE ROCK BAND/RIB JOINT Roots Of Rock TM’ Roll, Vol. 7 _(Savoy)_

A few weeks back, 20/20, the TV tabloid show, ran a segment on new wave. By way of introduction, Hugh Downs ogled the camera and, eyes twinkling, recited the first verse of Danny and the Juniors’ “Rock and Roll Is Here to Stay,” oozing adult indulgence with every syllable. Moments later, Mick Jones of the Clash was glaring at us as he gargled something to the effect that America has forgotten what rock ’n’ roll is all about, mate, and the Clash have come here to freshen our memories.1 To which Joe Strummer added, “And it’s not about playing the right chords, for a start!”

Put this curious statement together with Elvis Costello’s infamous cocktail lounge quip about Ray Charles being a dumb, blind nigger —to former Ikette Bonnie Bramlett, yet—and the notorious new wave hostility begins to look less like teen arrogance and more like plain ignorance.

Ignorance of what? Of the roots of rock ’n’ roll in blues and R&B singing and playing styles; in R&B, blues shuffle, and boogie woogie rhythmic patterns—in other words, in black American music. Which isn’t to say that Costello, for instance, should start doing Wynonie Harris and. Hank Ballard tunes— rock ’n’ roll has always meant choosing your own musical ancestors—only that he ought to realize where those three chords came from in the first place.

A good place to begin is with Rib Joint, Volume 7 in Savoy’s laudable, if uneven, Roots of Rock ’n’ Roll series. The group on the 2-LP set is billed as Sam Price and the Rock Band, which is stretching the meaning of rock a bit as far as Price is concerned: Now 72 and still performing in New York, Price plays effortless boogie woogie piano in a rolling Southwestern style that encompasses 20’s jazz, Texas blues, and R&B without missing a lick..

What makes this collection special, however, is the presence of tenor saxophonist King Curtis and guitarist McHouston “Mickey” Baker. The fir$t LP, comprised of singles cut in 1956, features Curtis’ gravelly, assertive R&B tenor, with solos by Baker (the Mickey of Mickey and Sylvia, who had a hit with “Love is Strange”) that are distinctive for their high volume, overloaded treble, and unpredictable proto-Jeff Beck construction. Although the tunes are nominally Price’s, Curtis transforms up-tempo honkers like “Back Room Rock,” “Ain’t No Strain,” and “Rib Joint— II” into samplers of the R&B sax player’s art, pouring out riff after classic riff with a tone that modulates from insistent to insinuating, from slurred to ringing. In the space of 12 cuts, Curtis staked out the common ground of R&B and rock ’n’ roll sax styles with a brilliance that still maintains after mor£ than 20 years.

On the same tunes, as well as those from the piano oriented, hornless 1959 recordings that make up the 2nd LP, Mickey Baker’s playing is so inspirationally off the wall as to make it conceivable that he invented every major rock guitar style from Chuck Berry’s to Santo and Johnny’s, but was so busy playing that he never got around to recording them.

And Sam Price? He just keeps working those three chords, effortlessly and with style, like he has for the past 50 years.

Mark von Lehmden

SYLVAIN SYLVAIN (RCA)

Throughout his career with The Dolls and on his own, the most important thing Syl Sylvain has given the world is a new understanding of the place of the nerd in society. Syl’s character on stage, right up to his days in David Johansen’s first solo band, was always the dorky troll—a perfect rock ’n’ roll version of Sal Mineo in Rebel Without A Cause. Sal (Syl) was the sloppy second who on one level was simply tolerated by the front man, but later proved his crucial worth ip revealing the lead’s humanity and passion. If James Dean was the brooding outsider with a higher purpose (which David Jo never was), then Sal appeared to be the leech bn him (which Syl was regardless). But this seemingly oxymoronic relationship was never patronizing. In fact the smaller guy became a kind of incarnation of the “cool” guy’s true insecurities. And if the lead was truly cool, he would come to resent the world for not recognizing these abberations as existing in someone as captivating as himself as well.

With David and Syl, this was the basis of one of the great stage dichotomies of all time (right up there with Burns and Allen or Joe Dallesandro and Holly Woodlawn). Johansen’s kindly, protective love for Syl, shown on stage as they both clowned around—hugging each other, with David inevitably coming over to give Syl a big sloppy kiss at the show’s close—all this only added to David’s egalitarian “is-everybody-happy?” master-ofceremonies persona. If Johansen dabbled in Fiorucci “chic” while always trashing it so as to never look either imitative or uppity, Sylvain’s terminal neighborhood looks and actions helped keep him in line. Syl was the one who gave The Dolls and the early Johansen band humanity beyond all the fruity pranks.

Would that Syl Had brought a workable dosage of this cute and warming persona to his first solo album. Instead he seems to be suffering from a true “poisonality crisis,” dishing up 50’s rock that even Robert Gordon would cast off as too derivative. It’s mostly the sort of stuff record company bios love to call “straight-ahead old time rock ’n’ roll” (in other words, refried John Entwistle solo albums).

One exception is “Teenage News,” which has that sailor-on-shore-leave whistling from the old Dolls. Here, as always, Syl is camp before he even tries to be, making him at once vulnerable and unselfconscious. A lot of the problem with the other cuts is that they’re so flatchested that Syl’s preening selfparody is rendered lame. This is bad news indeed on Paul Anka-ish ballads like “I’m So Sorry,” with its Aqua-filtere smokey background. If Syl weren’t trying to trash himself, he could have kept his hair long and looked like Marc Bolan (the only rock star whose death made me cry real crocodile tears). But Sylvain doesn’t have it in him to play it straight. And the awful truth, it appears, is that on his own, and only on his own, does Sylvain Sylvain seem dorky.

Jim Farber

NRBQ Kick Me Hard (Red Rooster/Rounder) All Hopped Up (Red Rooster/Rounder)

There comes a time when even the best of novelty songs—from “Leader of the Laundromat” to “Disco Duck”—can drive you so up the wall with repeated listenings that if you hear it just once more, David Berkowitz (who, incidentally, is a member of the viola section at the Met Opera. Small world.) is liable to get himself a cellmate. Well, some years ago, when the blooze revival was swinging for whatever it was worth, NRBQ’s Terry Adams composed a classic novelty lyric in the form of “Howard Johnson’s Got His Ho-Jo Working.” The Q’s rendition of said number, however, was so straight ahead perfect that the record didn’t sell a thing. Despite this calamity, life and NRBQ went on, with the latter switching labels four times.

The most recent of these has resulted in Kick Me Hard, wherein we find NRBQ’s revised reading of Alvin and the Chipmunks’ “Things We Like To Do” (sample lyrics: “We like to make records/And ride in the limo...We like to watch CHiPS/With Poncharello”). But by adding impeccable harmonies and T. Adams’ lovely organ, NRBQ comes up with the unlikely highlight of this, their seventh LP.

Not to mention, setting the tone for Kick Me Hards 12 other tracks. On some, lightweight material is given the Vic Tanny treatment, while at the same time many an. Arnold Schwhartzenwhatever gets the iron pumped out of it. Only NRBQ could conceive of turning Rosemary Clooney’s “This Old House” into a rockabilly smasher, while recording the jazz standard “Tenderly” the first time Whole Wheat Horns saxophonist Keith Spring ever tried to play it and Johnny Horton’s “North to Alaska” the first time any of them tried to play it. Or discover “Hot Biscuits and Sweet Marie,” written by Lincoln “Name Game” Chase and featuring minor legend/buddy (Bunky and) Jake (and the Family Jewels) on bg vocals, while throwing away the album’s most potent single possibility on A1 Anderson’s (not again) vulgar “It Was An Accident.” Kick Me Hard is the album NRBQ’s fans probably figured the band’d never dare put out;# it may be too bizarre for anybody else.

But not to worry. For the folks at Rounder have also rescued NRBQ’s independent LP of 1977, All Hopped Up, and remastered it, complete with a resequenced track order designed to spotlight those hits, hits, hits. The Terry Adams and Joseph Spampinato pop songs conspicuously absent from KMH are all over this one: “It Feels Good” and “Things to You” from Mr. Adams, and “That’s Alright” from J.S. I don’t think it was NRBQ who said “When we rock, we rock,” but you wouldn’t know it by “I Got a Rocket in My Pocket” (courtesy of Jimmy Logsdon) and “Cecilia” (likewise, Dave Dreyer and Herman Ruby). The daffiness that fuels the new LP is hardly neglected here, as demonstrated by the polytonal runthrough of the Bonanza theme and the country and western “Call Him Off, Rogers,” him referring to the dog that’s attempting to keep Terry Adams from ever playing the clavinet again. Best qf all is A1 Anderson’s “Riding In My Car,” which will be a gold record someday for somebody, or my name is Roy Trakin.

If all that’s not enough, each purchase of Kick Me Hard and All Hopped Up supports the ever so worthy Rounder cause without subjecting one’s self to a single Appalachian work song.

Ira Kaplar

THE INMATES First Offense (Polydor/Radar)

Sure, I’ve gone along with the shift in the English new wave style, from punk to power pop, and then beyond. I’ve appreciated and, in some cases, even recqmmended groups like Dire Straits and Interview and Bram Tchaikovsky in these pages. But all the while I’ve wondered—what happened to all the raw rock ’n’ roll the Sex Pistols and Clash promised to bring home to us from the U.K.?

See, my continuing British Invasion rock aesthetic happens to derive more from the Animals than from the Beatles. I loved the Animals in 1964 because they were cruder and more provincial and thus — let’s face.it — far more American than the Beatles could ever hope to be. And as the Burdon-centered Animals also possessed a singular genius for dissolution, speedier than any of their competitors’, I’ve been looking for suitably raunchy successors to their throne ever since the 60’s.

When the 76-77 English punk wave first hit here, I fell hard for the Stranglers, as Dave Greenfield’s organ pulses and washes instantly suggested Alan Price’s for the Animals, and I had high hopes for the group. In fact, I listened to the Stranglers’ super organ sound so damn intently that I didn’t even hear their misogynist lyrics, until I’d read 20 reviews warning me of same. Okay, so the Stranglers went down the same sewer that claimed the Animals; what comes next? Sitting home and going gray from watching the Clash not catch on here? *

Nope, rebellions within rebellions persist, and “punk” rock just may be breaking out in England all over again, if this debut LP from the Inmates (on a label renowned for its stylistic foresight) is any indication. Unlike the Animals or Stranglers (surprise!), the Inmates don’t have an organist and, judging by the cryptic liner notes, they don’t even seem to have a regular drummer yet, but their album is-Certainly selfcontained,enough in its raw rock ’n’ roll mania.

The Inmates’ sound is a furious melange of rockabilly, rhythm & blues, and (past & present) punk elements, and this electric combination provides one of the most immediately exciting albums I’ve heard in months. In the custom of the original British Invasion, the Inmates hook you right off with covers of enshrined oldies — the Standells’“Dirty Water” and the Pretty Things’ “Midnight to Six Man” burn in their updated versions here — and then sock it to you with their own good stuff, like “Mr. Unreliable” or the snarling “Jealousy”. (I take it that these songs are the Inmates’ own stuff — the composer, ope “P. Staines”, appears to be a distant relative of the Stones’ beloved Nanker Phelge.)

Bill Hurley slings the lyrics with the snotty snazz of punk legends from Reg Presley to Jim Sohns, and the band (Peter Gunn and Tony Oliver on guitars, Ben Donnelly on bass) are never less than headlong in their r‘n*r rush behind Hurley.

But you don’t even have to take my 2-bit Yank word for the Inmates’ virtues — just ask the first mythic Englishman you can find, from Eric Burdon to Phil May to ol’ John Bull himself (he sits in on drbms on one cut here) — they’ll tell ya that the Inmates are seminally hot!

Richard Riegel

LITTLE FEAT Down On The Farm (Warner Bros.)

On the miserably cold and wet afternoon of December 12, 1976 I dutifully trekkejd out to Shea Stadium to watch Joe Namath play his last home game as a New York Jet. It was a pathetic spectacle, a degrading and hopeless anticlimax to a once brilliant New York career. Perhaps the worst part was that the outcome was totally predictable. As the sparse crowd (23,000 ticket holders stayed home) of masochists like myself left the subway stairs and headed for the stadium, foolish enough to pray for the impossible in the teeth of insurmountable evidence, we passed a few frantic scalpers facing imminent ruin. As they shouted their plummeting prices the people around me snickered and kept walking. One particularly desperate kid was down to three bucks for field level boxes when a guy behind me, overcome by that choking mix of outrage and humiliation peculiar to fans entering Shea in recent years snarled, “Eat those tickets, sucker. Eat ’em!”

I just finished listening to Down on the Farm, Little Feat’s farewell to Lowell George and everyone else, and I’m thinking of that guy at Shea—of his anger, frustration, and rage. Against my better judgement I followed what I considered to be a flawed career for too long. Never a full-time genius, George hadn’t produced anything of real value in years, but my memories (and Little Feat’s first three LPs) kept me warm. After all reasonable expectations had been extinguished I asked for this assignment anyway on the incalculably slim chance that, for one last time, he might have written, sung, and played as if it meant something. This, of course, was not the case.

Let’s be blunt. This record has no redeeming features whatsoever and I am seriously affronted that it exists at all, especially as a final tribute to Lowell George. Let’s also be accurate. This isn’t the worst record of the year, but it’s certainly the most flagrantly poor and purposeless released by a band I once loved since the Yule brothers tried to make a Velvets album by themselves: I categorically refuse to talk about the music on this record because to do so would implicitly validate it. Suffice to say that it. contains conclusive evidence that George, in his last days, suffered from degeneration of the larynx, slide arthritis, and a generalized softening of the arteries.

The sleeve.proclaims, “Produced by Lowell George...with a little help from his friends.” Like they say, with friends like these, etc. etc. Lowell George is beyond embarrassment now and, judging by this record, so are his erstwhile buddies —but I’m not. The music business is a monument to the premise “Any popularity is justified popularity” or, put another way, “Any sale is a good sale”. To which I say: EAT THIS RECORD, WARNER BROTHERS, EAT IT!

(On that abysmal afternoon three years ago, the Cincinnati Bengals won 42 to 3 as the Jets were able to gain only a scant 77 yards—the lowest total offense in their checkered history. Joe Willie Namath played only the first half, completing 4 of 15 passes,-the longest for 6 yards. He was intercepted 4 times. That winter he moved to L.A. to put the finishing touches on his career...with a little help from his friends.)

Jeff Nesin

TOOTH AND NAIL (Upsetter) BEACH BLVD. (Poshboy)

Well, L.A.’s on trial again. Used to be, last decade, they were hauling her in regularly, mostly on loitering raps. Now they—the international music critics, self-appointed taste cops of the New Age—got the dame up on a plagiarism beef. They charge that the city’s much vaunted Nuevo rock renaissance (you must’ve read about it) is lifted, lock, stock and licks, off the NYC and limey scenes of the year 1977.

Let’s check those motives. Why would these Californicators want to rexerox all that rapidograph safety pin stuff anyway—to “cash in’? Have any of L.A.’s pogo pushers (outside of the Dickies) gotten signed, much less fat? Nope; L.A. bands getting signed nowadays come from the powerpap rank§. Well, maybe news travels slow and these Angelenos are just now getting the message from 36 months back?

The point is: L.A. is guilty as charged. Sure, virtually most of the burg’s best beat combos draw tons of soul and inspiration from prock’s halycon days. Everyone— from the boss Klan (who recycle everything, even the sacred “Pushin’ Too Hard,” into antichrist whitenoise) to the amazing Alleycats, and the fab Fear—digs the crash & burn scene. But hey, so what? Who the hell else is going to carry on the spirits of 77 (easily r ’n’ r’s greatest year—since ’65)? Having watered the seeds the Ramones sowed back then, the Brits by 1979 were already chopping the punk tree down to provide kindling for such fashionable fires as powerpop, the mod, ska and R&B revivals, etc, etc.

Besides, L.A. is shamelessly guiltfree and its sin is so delicious. I mean, who could listen to either of these great L.A. anthologies and come away carping? Tooth And Nail alone packs enough venom and vitriol (Flesheaters, Germs’ incredible “Manimal”), enough idiosyncratic boy genius behavior (Rik L. Rik’s Negative Trend), enough immortal riffs (two steel-fisted cuts by UXA) and enough posthumous, unbeatable r ’n’ r primitivism (all three Controllers cuts) to satiate the hungriest, Stooges-starved noisefiend.

Beach Blvd., a collection of suburban NW bands is, on the whole, lighter, even more derivative stuff but it still kicks ass on anything I’ve heard outa NYC in 2-3 years. Mr. Rik reprises his biggest hits plus the mysterioso/melodic “Atomic Lawn.” Rosemead’s Simpletones outdo the Dickies at elevating the Banal to pure pleasure (“I Have A Date,” “Tiger Beat Twist”) and deliver the devastatingly dumbest tribute ever to Mike Love and his fat cousins from Hawthorne in the immortal “California.” Dick Dale’s wetsuit and whiplash leads haunt all four of The Crowd’s Ramone-ish hits, including “Trix Are For Kids” and “Living In Madrid” (one of the most wreckless vocals ever recorded, by Jim Decker).

I’m sick of New York’s boring No Wave. I’ve had it with Frisco’s politi-rock and I don’t even care what trend this week’s NME has cooked up in England; albums like these two blow all that crap outa the water and state the case loud and clear for one idea whose time has finally come: L.A. chauvinism. Up the city of the Angels!

Gene Sculatti

MAGAZINE Secondhand Daylight _(Virgin) _

Once upon a time —

No, I’m not going to do that! It’s tempting, but I really dislike record reviews that masquerade as short stories. Too often they’re just too transparently clever, too obviously the work of a writer who has become prematurely infatuated with his own style. But, damn, I’ve listened to this record six times in a row and still haven’t heard anything worth writing about...

Magazine is new wave by association, by virtue of lead singer/ lyricist Howard Devoto’s past association with the Buzzcocks and his post-Iggy vocal stylings, by dint of their packaging — but musically and lyrically this stuff is old hat. There’s no new wave succinctness here, no economy or irony. Just a surfeit of Pink Floydian chord coasting behind bleak and wintry lyrics. Such a consistency of effect, songs languishing in an unrelieved stupor of alienation, makes for a pretty boring album.

Maybe I will just tell a story... something about what a sopor this album is...naw, been writing about drugs too much lately...kind of lost its zing. Maybe something pointing out how the second wave of each new musical movement is more prone to atrophy no matter how creatively rich the initial wave is, if only because they are at least once removed from the source...so second waves have to be both creative and rejuvenative...and not just interpretive unless their personalities are strong.enough that... uh...so...hmmm...wonder who’s on Carson tonite?

Sorry, my mind wandered. It’s that kind of record. There is one moment here, tho, that’s worth repeating as an example of something or other. Creative stasis, I guess. It’s from “Permafrost,” the album’s closer. The musi$, typically turgid, supplies a few grand guignol chords while Devoto sings, “As the day stops dead/At the place where we’re lost/I will drug you and fuck you/On the permafrost.” If the whole album had been so agressively chilly then at least there would have been a solid core in the sludge. Which is the final word on Magazine. They’re not even particularly bad.

Richard C. Walls

STEVE FORBERT Jackrabbit Slim _ (Nemperor/Epic)

A young folk-rocker hits New York, checks into the YMCA, and is soon found playing the Greenwich Village folkie circuit. A couple of years of dues-paying hard work, then a CONTRACT, leading to an album full of refreshingly direct, engaging folk tunes and buoyant, easy rockers, all of which are selfreferential tales of the road just taken. Unassuming, yet aware, the guitar strumrner sings of what he has so far seen and heard and, for the” most part, he avoids coloring his observations with too much judgmental interpretation: “Buildings and people down under the skies/I walk down the street lookin’ out through my eyes.” And with a spunky and unobstrusive production job working in tandem with the singer’s relaxed, “just folks” stance, the debut recording turns out to be a real winner. No friends, this is not a story from 1962, but rather of the late 70’s, and Steve Forbert, this generation’s new ramblin’ boy, was discovered (as it were) at CBGB, of all places. In other words, the real tale behind Alive on Arrival Wasn’t as simple as “talented kid makes good.” No, Forbert was clever enough to figure out the music biz, and to play it as well as the guitar and harmonica. No naif, Steve. Which is cool.

Except that his second album, Jackrabbit Slim, leans more heavily on a considered attempt to further his commercial appeal than it does on the raw talent and song-writing skill that are Forbert’s strengths. Not that Forbert is himself entirely to blame. After all, he was left at the studio door in Nashville by producer Joe Wissert (who split for B. Strei: sand, bucks being bucks) and, on short notice, came up with John Simon (The Band, etc.), who doesn’t seem to know the meaning of the term “simplicity” as it applies to Forbert’s music. The material is again top-notch: a mixture of romance (“Romeo’s Tune” deserves to become a classic), sometimes humorous and sometimes sad observations of every-day events (“Complications” tells of snowed-in airports and souped-up cars with no gas; “Sadly Sorta Like a Soap Opera” is just that—with a drinking, cheating husband, “You try to make the best of it/Which isn’t much I know”), and one more touching bit of Forbert’s life story (“January 23-30, 1978,” the return home from the Big City, where he discovers “Who got married, yes and who split up”). There is poignance in Fobert’s equating important emotional occurrences with the ordinary and usual—he points out the inevitability of both.

If Forbert were left alone to focus on the songs, Jackrabbit Slim would be a terrific album. But it’s all he can do to make himself heard, what with worn-out horn charts, quaaluded back-up singers (who cling like Peter Pan’s shadow and make their presence known every time Forbert gets to a meaningful line), and Bobby Ogdin on the piano, who—well, if I want Burt Bacharach, I’ll get one of his records. Then there’s this organ that adds a solemnity that is antithetical to Forbert’s easy-going manner. And for all the over-production, it all sounds surprisingly blah.

No doubt Steve Forbert will survive this aberration. Remember, Steve, less is more.

Jim Feldman

20/20 _ (Epic) _

Hindsight is always 20/20. In 79'80, a pop renaissance is supposedly under way, stirring itself from a long hibernation like a groggy Boo Boo Bear, thanks to the overnight sensation of the well-scrubbed Knickknacks. But looking back, one can easily see that the whole “powerpop” syndrome—overloading the pop formula with a romanticism based on the desire to return to a more innocent age (i.e., the Beatle Era)—has never really been absent: it hovers above rock history like the cool snap of a gangster’s fingers signalling a clean burst of gunfire.

In the early 70’s, a pop revival seemed on the verge of happening with countless bands pining to recreate the drama of “I Want To Hold Your Hand.” Some left their mark (Big Star, the Raspberries, Badfinger); others remain only collectors’ items (Marcus Hook Roll Band, Circus, Blue Ash).

Personally, I think it was the Knickerbockers (not to be confused with the*Knickknacks) who started this whole (I hesitate to call it “genre”) tradition. Their hit in ’65 “Lies,” echoed the Beatles, a perfect • xerox of the Fab Four’s sound. Certainly today’s pop evangels share a genuine nostalgia for the uncomplicated and the wholesome, but perhaps their primary motivation is as impure as that of the Knickerbockers—to become paragons of imitation. Of the Current crop of diehard romantics (the Beat, the Shoes, the SrtSp-CracklePop), 20/20 stands out as a band, if not totally original, at least able to define its predicament. Furthermore, the group’s debut, if not altogether a breathtaking affair, does imply that here’s a group willing to endure the inevitable “Beatlesque” tag if only for the momentary thrill of recapturing memories of things past.

Frequently 20/20 sounds like a fellow band from Tulsa, the Dwight Twiliey Band (ex-Twilley drummer, Phil Seymour, even sings on the album). But mostly 20/20 sound like eager beavers trying their best not to sound like copycats; in fact, they strain so hard that it gives their music a raw edge, leaving the impression that each song is a first take. Except for the synthesized effects of the Wizzard of Whoopee, Earle Mankey (an ex-Sparks tweeter), 20/20’s modern pop is as harddriving as that of AM hitmakers like Cheap Trick, the Cars, or Tom Petty.

“Tonight We Fly” is a( speed demon of a car tune; “Cheri,” a pumping paean to pubescent lust. On “Out of This Time,” the dilemma of the typical power-popper is evoked: tr.apped in an epoch when the beat of the Buggs must yield to the castrato falsetto of the GollyGee Bees, how does one survive except through fantasy and the reduplication of beloved past formulae?

But it’s more than a desire for innocent and commercially viable forms of music that’s at the heart of this bring-back-pop conservatism— for the ecstasy of the pop moment is contained in the first smooch of first love; in short, pop revivalism is both a celebration of that long-lost kiss and an attempt to revive its initial spark, an obsessive longing that’s damned from the outset. As 20/20 sings on “Backyard Guys”— “Why does the world have to change so?/I wish I could go to the time when we kissed by the street light.”

On “Remember the Lightning” (next to Petty’s “Here Comes My Girl,” the most quaintly expressive of all current pop songs), one can hear 20/20,' like schoolboys looking up a girl’s skirt as she climbs a jungle gym, panting uncontrollably —“Remember the night and it felt so exciting/Remember the lightning!” Without a smirk, the song not only recaptures the uncertain fondling of young love but also yearns for it, suggesting that intimate moment in Tom Sawyer when Becky Thatcher and Tom finally kiss, while walking hand in hand, lost inside a dark secret cave secluded from the cares and the demands of grown-up tyranny.

Robot A. Hull

JOHN CALE Sabotage/Live _(Spy/I.R.S.)

John Cale’s got all the credentials a cult figure could want. Membership in the legendary Velvet Underground. Production and/or arranging gigs with Nico, the Stooges, Patti Smith and more recently, Squeeze and the Model Citizens. Not to mention a slew of solo LPs that cut through the enforced mellowness of the early 70’s like a rusty razor blade cutting through moldy mild cheddar.

But for all his talents, a cult figure’s all that Cale’s likely to remain. He’s just too good at depicting life on the edge with accuracy he’s never been able to ham it up like David Bowie and Alice Cooper or cool it down like the Talking Heads and the Cars. I mean, there’s just no way Middle America is gonna take a phrase like “Fear is a man’s best friend” to its heart like it has, “We are family,” “You deserve a break today,” or even “Gabba gabba hey!” No way. That’s why his closest brush with fame came with his ominous/hilarious version of “Heartbreak Hotel” instead of one of his own tunes.

Now for this new album, his first in about four years, Cale’s cast his usual haughty literary allusions aside for the front pages of the Times and the back pages of Soldier of Fortune. Military references abound; mercenaries, murder and mayhem dominate the disc, and if you think John’s got some juicy comments about the violence vectorama, you’re right. My fave is, “Military intelligence isn’t what it used to be/So whatl/Human intelligence isn’t what it used to be either,” from “Sabotage,” and there are plenty more to go around.

But yes, there are problems with this project, though whether they’re due to budgetary limitations, lack of rehearsals, lousy acoustics, or oP J.C.’s well-documented self-destructive urges, I couldn’t say. The basic hang-up is that although the vibe here is raw and crude, several of the arrangements—notably the poppy background vocals on “Dr. Mudd,” the extended intro to “Captain Hook,” and the stop-start uncertainties of “Sabotage”—aren’t geared to this sort of an approach. Add a murky, uneven mix and you’ve weakened the impact of the songs considerably. John was rarely one to let a studio inhibit his intensity, as his mid-70’s Island trilogy of Fear, Slow Dazzle and Helen of Troy shows; compared to them, Sabotage/Live comes across as a tough-nosed but ultimately disappointing demo.

Michael Davis